HooXi: "I think all roles fit the players better than before, but the transition will take some time"

The Danish in-game leader feels like they still need a few more months to make a proper assessment of the team's renewed composition.

After a tough early exit from IEM Cologne, Astralis at least partially bounced back with their LAN finals run in BLAST Bounty Season 2, taking down Rare Atom and Natus Vincere relatively comfortably to book a ticket to Malta.

The bounce back ended with a whimper in the BLAST studio, as MOUZ opened their LAN campaign by comfortably dispatching of the Danes in 2-0 fashion. Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen is not left unhappy, however, despite the result.

"I didn't feel today like we didn't show up at all," HooXi stated. "Kudos to MOUZ, they played really well, and I think that if we played 5% better on Nuke, it's a very different best-of-three."

HooXi not only addressed the team's game with MOUZ in an interview with HLTV, he also spoke on where Astralis are as a team right now, and the recent role changes within the squad.

You can listen to the interview, here.

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You had a couple of rough back-to-back exits now, but you played good teams. You have been on the come-up, though. You had Astana, FPG, but now you have lost to good teams. What do you think you need to get to the next level, where you're not just beating the lower teams?

This exit is very different from the Cologne one. There's an online part to it, and we managed to beat NAVI, and we played a pretty clean game against Rare Atom. I don't think that was too bad. I didn't feel today like we didn't show up at all. Kudos to MOUZ, they played really well, and I think that if we played 5% better on Nuke, it's a very different best-of-three, so I'm not too unhappy about this one even though we lost quite convincingly.

There's a lot to learn from this game and I said this also in the pre-game interview: What we need to beat these top 3 teams is better decision-making in the XvsX situations. Most of the time we are good enough mechanically, and sometimes even better than them tactically. So yeah, we just need to step it up a bit individually when it's fast-paced and you have to think fast on your feet.

Tell me about the Nuke CT side, because you were looking pretty good coming off of the T side and you won the three rounds after the pistols, and it could've gone your way, but then in the gun rounds it seemed like they were a step ahead. What went on there?

We started off good, we won the pistol won the two following, and when we got into the weapon rounds we got into a few 2vs2s that we lost. There were some mistakes in the early rounds, like one round they killed our lobby guy and had full map control and then it's a very tough round from there. So, it's just about mistakes like that, individual mistakes that need to get fixed, and that's not something that happens overnight. You have to go through the motions, you have to learn from mistakes, and it's not always something you can just talk yourself out of. It's expected, I think, after this amount of time together.

Where do you think you're at now? What do you expect from the next tournaments? What level are you at now?

I have a tough time with expectations, still, especially when it's this new. After six months we can start to talk about actual results-based expectations. I think right now, when we play to our level, we're below the top 3 teams, but after that I think we can beat everyone on any given day, and I think we need to have a really good day to beat MOUZ, Spirit, or Vitality, but it's still manageable.

But yeah, expectation-wise it's just that we always show up and give it our all, and that we have something we can look at and learn from so that we don't do a Cologne again. (Laughs)

A lot has been talked about the roles, with Staehr taking some of those star positions and so on, but I want to hear from you, the IGL. How are you seeing the adaptation and the evolution since this has been going on?

jabbi is slotting into his roles pretty quickly, he played them before and I knew his skillset, so he's doing better than expected, honestly. For Staehr, it's different because it's a way bigger responsibility to pick up, whereas maybe jabbi is losing some responsibility in a way when it comes to communication and initiative. I think that Staehr is getting a lot, and that takes some time to get used to, and stavn is going from very active roles to an in between role, where he kind of has to make reads and be a joker sometimes.

I think all roles fit the players better than before, but the transition period will take some time. Six months will be a fair assessment to know where we are, but after two it's hard to say.